Rare books on display at Directorate of Archives (2008, Herald, Panjim)

Rare books on display at Directorate of Archives

FRANKY GRACIAS

PANJIM, NOV 18
Historie Der Inquisite Tot Goa by Pieter Mortier (1697) is amongst the oldest books at the exhibition of rare books by the Directorate of Archives and Archaeology as part of the National Book Week that ends on November 20.

The books on display are from the reference library of the archives department and Historie is one amongst its collection of approximately 55,000 books and date back to the 18th, 19 and 20th centuries. Majority of the books are in Portuguese, French, English, Hindi, Marathi and Konkani. Historie gives the narration of the Portuguese inquisition in Goa.

Diverse flavours of Portuguese food….f

QUOTE To their credit, contemporary Portuguese cooks have readily incorporated the spices and hot peppers of the former colonies into their food. David Leite, creator of the influential Web site http://www.leitesculinaria.com, tells the story of this evolving cuisine in his first book, The New Portuguese Table. UNQUOTE
Source: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/food/20090903_Diverse_flavors_of_Portuguese_food.html

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Tony Disney’s A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire

From http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521409087

A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire
From Beginnings to 1807
Volume 2, The Portuguese Empire
A. R. Disney
La Trobe University, Victoria
Hardback

(ISBN-13: 9780521409087)

* Also available in Paperback
* | eBook formatPublished April 2009

Temporarily unavailable – no date available
$90.00 (C)

Absence: what a Goan writer finds when he embarks on a journey (Review by Eusebio L. Rodrigues)

Eusebio L. Rodrigues, who has been at Georgetown University’s English Department, takes a closer look at Joao da Veiga Coutinho’s “A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadows of History” (Yuganta Press, Connecticut, 1997), and finds the author’s  search has taught him many things. Including the lesson that there is no single way of being a Goan. And that Goans were among the first to experience a dislocating sense of exile that is modern; and that Goans must learn to live without roots, and replace roots with horizons in order to see a world of infinite possibility. Says the reviewer: “I hope this review will trigger questions about what it means to be a Goan.”

Eusebio L. Rodrigues

Joao da Veiga Coutinho, a Goan whose inner depths have been disturbed by mysterious eruptions, writes ‘A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadows of History’ to understand what is happening to him. He undertakes a painful return to the self he was, so that the act of writing becomes an invitation to a voyage of discovery. A shy sensitive seeker he will exhume his buried self, not to tell all, but to toss out bits and pieces that his reader has to put together before meanings can emerge.

These emerge reluctantly in spurts of meditations, comments, musings. They erupt out of a life that is deliberately not channeled into autobiography — that would be just a construct — but as an erratic, bubbling flow, a random quest crowded with questions.

It is a two fold quest. That of a writer who begins a search for he knows not what, one who sets forth to understand his Goanness, and who insists also that his reader come along with him on a parallel quest. He talks to his reader, but keeps him at the distance proper to art. He offers the reader insights but no explanations, compels him to experience his own hesitancies, his broodings, his speculations. Treats the reader as a kinsman, a Goan frPre, capable of sharing the experience and of understanding its meaning.

The journey opens with a meditation on history in general and on Goan history in particular. No generalizations on history are offered, for the writer will not trap himself in a definition. History, an ongoing process, involves time, and time never stops, it flows. Our writer is a Bakhtinian with a dialogical imagination.

Publica Livraria, nuggets from an old institution (by Lourdes Bravo da Costa)

Maria De Lourdes Bravo Da Costa Rodrigues

The Central Library has its beginnings in the Academia Militar established in 1817. In 1832 it became a public library during the tenure of the Vice-Roy Dom Manuel de Portugal e Castro and was named Publica Livaria.

Initially, the objective of this library was to “improve public education of the youth, especially with respect to military education in common benefit to the State utility to Royal service”.

The Provincial Government of the Estado da India, wanted to extend this service to the citizens in general so that they could acquire knowledge by reading different books.

In order to enhance the collection of books, the Government ordered that the books from the suppressed convents run by religious orders be transferred to the library.

The library changed its name over the course of years. On 5th October 1836, it was renamed ‘Bibliotheca Nacional de Goa’. This upgrading facilitated exchange between libraries and institutions worldwide.

Portuguese poet and writer Tomas Ribeiro felt that there was a lacuna in the cultural life of Goa and so a cultural center, Instituto Vasco da Gama was born in 1871.

Memoirs … of a voice from the airwaves

This is about the most bizarre thing to do while encountering a book: try to read it from the ending! That’s just what I did with the autobiography of someone you might know, a lady called Imelda Dias. So one is still trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw together; but it was an interesting read.

Most of Goa of a particular generation — those around here in the 1960s and 1970s — would probably remember the name “Imelda” (or even Imelda Tavora). She then was the most popular announcer in the State, at a time when radio was the unquestioned king of all the mass media. (Forget about TV, which didn’t exist here yet, and newspapers were far smaller.) So I began reading her book with the Epilogue.

This chapter took me to my schoolboy days in the 1970s, and the music that Imelda played for all of us via the radio. It came through loud and clear on Sunday afternoons. It came on Friday nights. It came in the afternoon siesta time on weekdays. All the names of the programmes sounded so very fresh — ‘Your Choice’, ‘Latin Rhythm’, ‘Your Favourites’ and more. Many readers would probably even recall the sign-off name “Yours truly, Imelda”.

This book is about the Goa that was, touching a bit on colonial Goa and the period just after 1961. Those were times of change and uncertainty. But they were nice times too, in a way. Imelda’s book tells the story of the Catholic elite of the times, the nostalgia with which it looks back, and life in the “good old days”.

Subtitled “An Autobiography of a Woman Ahead of Her Times”, this is also a story of a woman going against the trend, settling for a divorce in the 1960s, and facing the patriarchy of Catholic Goa of the times. It’s a book edited by Margaret Mascarenhas, editor of ‘Skin’.

Spiced with the gossipy details of Panjim’s life in the 1970s, parts of the book are very engrossing. But one couldn’t believe all one read, even if this only incited one’s curiosity to learn more of those times. Besides her boarding years in Pune (then still Poona), this story talks about life in All India Radio, what it meant to be a political refugee of sorts in Salazar’s Lisbon post-1961, and stories of love and romance from another era. It’s a good read for anyone who grew up in the Goa of those years, and one would not hesitate recommending it (2006, Rs 250, printed and published by Imelda Dias, pp 189, hb).

With an catchy title like ‘How Long Is Forever’ and a covered mostly in black-and-white cover, this is a book that would catch your attention. Strangely, it isn’t very well displayed in most bookshops. Friends I mentioned it to, had all not come across it either!

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Writing on the diaspora: Burma, Bombay; Myanmar, Mumbai

Another interesting attempt that’s coming along is Yvonne Vaz-Ezdani’s proposed book that tells the story of Goan expats in Burma (now Myanmar). It is one more chapter — or should we say, book — about the lives of people from this emigration-prone region, just waiting to be told.

Yvonne can be contacted at 2409519 or raynon@vsnl.net. If you know someone who has a story to tell from this period, do get in touch.

Reena Martins, The Telegraph’s feature writer in Mumbai and a journo who traces her own roots to Pune, Mumbai and Velim, is meanwhile working — still in an early stage — on the stories of Goans in Mumbai between the 1930s and 1970s.  Reena is contactable via reenamartins@hotmail.com and do share your ideas and suggestions with her.

So, keep reading Goa-related books… and think of writing some too. It’s increasingly becoming possible to do so, as entry barriers get lower.

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Remembering the Fall of Portuguese India in 1961

Contributed by: Teotonio R. de Souza

Francisco Cabral Couto, O Fim do Estado Português da Índia, Lisboa, Tribuna, s.d, ISBN.10:972-8799-53-5, pp. 136. Priced at € 21.60 by FNAC in Lisbon, this hard cover coffee-table publication is perhaps the latest addition to the surprisingly rich and often controversial historiography about the end of the Portuguese colonial rule in India. The author, now a retired general, was a young 26-old fresher from Military Academy when he arrived in Goa on 27 March 1961 and was posted at the Afonso de Albuquerque military camp in the village of Navelim, with command over 47 «caçadores» (hunters) with responsibility for the defence of Borim bridge, Paroda canal, river Sal and Anjidiv island.

Within months the reinforcements made a total of 158, including many youngsters with little military training. They were mostly involved in reconnaissance missions to ward off terrorist attacks. Describes the lack of basic conditions for any sort of defence in any terms of strategic or military means at disposal. The camp headquarters at Navelim had a generator that did not work, and depended upon the use of kerosene lamps and stoves. With the exception of the delicious mangoes and abundant supply of bananas, classifies the food resources in Goa as of poor quality. There were canned supplies of quality food and drinks from UK and Holland, but few could afford them.

The author admits that he did not stay in Goa long enough to take the pulse of the civil society, but remained with the impression that most Goans favoured autonomy or integration with India. Felt that the Portuguese presence was tolerated and even respected, but not much loved: «Quanto aos portugueses, é importante dizê-lo, pareceu-me que eram, dum mode geral, respeitados, bem tolerados, mas não amados, a não ser por aqueles que com eles tinham fortes laços familiares» (pp. 20-21).